1854 Wyandotte Village | Ford City | Glenwood & Mt. Carmel | South Wyandotte
61. Energie Fitness and Smoothie Bar, opened 2004
During the late 1880s and early 1890s, a time when the entire country and the Eureka Iron Works were experiencing economic distress, the company searched for natural gas by drilling wells around Wyandotte. Digging was done on the southeast corner of the factory property at Eureka and Biddle.
Instead of finding gas, however, salt was discovered. A story that has since grown to the status of a local legend. This pivotal discovery of salt in 1889 made possible establishment of chemical industries, replacing steel production that was being threatened by larger steel manufacturers to the east. Pittsburg industrialist Captain John B. Ford took an active industry in the discovery of salt and founded the Michigan Alkali Company and J.B. Ford Company, to use salt in industrial operations.
